Presidential Visit [to Detroit] Monday, Sept. 5

[Baselinepunk]

as of 12:00 pm today, I have fired the vice-president and have resigned my position as POTUS, have a good day and I will see you on the golf course.....

Wow. If I would have said the same thing about Bush during any second of his "Presidency" I would have been called a traitor, Social-Commiest unAmerican who should be shot first, then again last and have my grave pissed on. My how times change ....

[BrushStart]

Maybe he sounds Southern because he lived on the southside of Chicago.

I doubt it. He doesn't usually sound like that.

[canuck]

Obama for Prime Minister!

[MidTownMs]

I doubt it. He doesn't usually sound like that.

That was supposed to be a joke...

[Eastburn]

That's more like it! Got to stir the pot every now & then.

[Gistok]

as of 12:00 pm today, I have fired the vice-president and have resigned my position as POTUS, have a good day and I will see you on the golf course.....

Gee wouldn't that be great... having another "Boehner" in the White House....

[Bigb23]

Wow. If I would have said the same thing about Bush during any second of his "Presidency" I would have been called a traitor, Social-Commiest unAmerican who should be shot first, then again last and have my grave pissed on. My how times change ....

Well said Baseline - people would call you on your citizenship when you questioned our involvement in Iraq, and a few WMD's, that never were found.

[jackie5275]

At least his visit took attention away from the nerd's inaugural walk across the Mackinac Bridge.

[Packards1]

Why would anyone want to go through what it takes to see the President speak. Closed roads, secret service screening, standing in a empty lot forever to hear all the same things we have heard from politicians for years. Doesn't anyone care about the cost of the 45 minutes in front of the voters? The salaries, fossil fuels burned and money spent for what? Save the money and fuels and wear and tear on aircraft and personnel and teleconference instead. There is plenty of talk about reducing government spending and many millions could have been saved today alone. A million here and there can start to add up.

[Steve bennet]

Why would anyone want to go through what it takes to see the President speak. Closed roads, secret service screening, standing in a empty lot forever to hear all the same things we have heard from politicians for years. Doesn't anyone care about the cost of the 45 minutes in front of the voters? The salaries, fossil fuels burned and money spent for what? Save the money and fuels and wear and tear on aircraft and personnel and teleconference instead. There is plenty of talk about reducing government spending and many millions could have been saved today alone. A million here and there can start to add up.

Completely agree.

Everything the President says is pretty much the same predictable "blah blah blah" rhetoric, I couldn't imagine why any rational person would want to spend a large portion of their day for this crap.
Maybe some people just like seeing famous people, I guess. I can't think of a reason.

[Goose]

Well said Baseline - people would call you on your citizenship when you questioned our involvement in Iraq, and a few WMD's, that never were found.

unlike all the interrogation regarding the two new wars BO has gotten us involved in... as well as how well we have gotten out of Iraq....

pot calling kettle

[Goose]

Wow. If I would have said the same thing about Bush during any second of his "Presidency" I would have been called a traitor, Social-Commiest unAmerican who should be shot first, then again last and have my grave pissed on. My how times change ....

but you would have done it with a poster of Bush with a nazi mustache calling him a murderer... much different.....

[Goose]

Completely agree.

Everything the President says is pretty much the same predictable "blah blah blah" rhetoric, I couldn't imagine why any rational person would want to spend a large portion of their day for this crap.
Maybe some people just like seeing famous people, I guess. I can't think of a reason.

i think people showed up thinking he was gonna "make it rain" with Obama money.....

[JBMcB]

Well said Baseline - people would call you on your citizenship when you questioned our involvement in Iraq, and a few WMD's, that never were found.

Old and busted: Being called a traitor for questioning the President about Iraq.

New hotness: Being called racist for questioning the President about Libya.

[Bigb23]

Am I the [[only) Ha - one who puts "Obama" in front of every issue known? Obama Iraq, Obama WMD, Obama - Cheney, Obama care, Obama SSI, Obama Corporate welfare, Whoops - Obama Republicans. No way. Diverse rhetoric at all cost, [[you and me).

[RickBeall]

[To answer the question posed in the subject of this thread]

No.

I mean, we already have Obama Gas, and Hamtramck has an Obama ice cream truck. What more could we want?

[jba]

Could not think of one good reason or one that was just a "little" good reason to drive downtown to listen to a campaign speech. Listened to excerts on the media.
President was campaingning alright. Thats OK. If I was there I would tell him that I just bought a Ford Fiesta [[doing my part to conserve gas)....but how come it was made in Mexico and not in Detroit? Yah...I know....profit goes to Ford. blah, blah, blah. But still it would have put a couple of our unemployed back to work.
And, oh yes...Jimy Hoffa is a complete flako thug. "we are your army Prez...we will take out the opposition [[Tea Party)"..I think they forget that so many of the opposition are retired union members and probably many who are working and in the union?
I want to hear the POTUS rebuff Hoffa and his VP [["Unions are stopping the barbarians at the gate") for their outragious statements. This will hurt Obama if he does not.
Wish the POTUS would forget about 2012 election and lead this country regardless of the outcome.

Waiting for his job plan scheduled for next week.
Me thinks that it could be similiar to the new one that Maxine Waters [[D-California) just proposed. Trillion Dollars Plus job program to create jobs.
Oh boy.......Brilliant Congressperson Waters...how come I didn't think of that?

[English]

Wow. Typical DYes, being typical [[although a lot of our regulars are, I suspect, out and about enjoying Detroit & the metro on this Labor Day, as I was just a moment ago).

I was there. I marched in the parade with my union, starting at Woodward and Mack. I've been an AFT member for 12 years. It was awesome. Labor rallies and parades are perhaps one of the most integrated events one will find in metro Detroit. There were small children and persons with snow-white hair, and everyone in-between. Everyone was sharing coffee and water, and there was a lot of goodwill in the air. There wasn't a lot of negativity or trash-talking, just strategy for continuing to support workers' legislation at the state and national level, and register voters for 2012.

The march was great. Fall is [[finally) here. We marched under pearly gray skies, through crisp air. It was peaceful. When there were obstacles or horse manure, the crowd helped others around them. We took care of small kids and seniors. It was a glorious feeling, yet all too short.

I was honored to march with two of my former teachers. One of them is the legendary Chris Holstein, academic games coach and award-winning math teacher. He's still teaching and told me today he'll teach until he drops. This man changed my life and the lives of thousands of other kids at Longfellow and Bates Academy with a career spanning the four decades since the exodus of the 1960s/1970s. It's because of him that I took Algebra in the seventh grade, and eventually AP Calculus in high school.

We didn't land in Hart Plaza this time. Instead we took a left turn and landed at Larned. We meandered down Larned to Rivard, then did a right into Rivard Plaza and the riverwalk.

Thanks to my friend, I had a great vantage point in the VIP section. Aretha Franklin looked and sounded great. I haven't seen her this in shape since I was a small child. Definitely one of Detroit's gifts to the world.

President Obama arrived and from the sound of the crowd, people were pretty glad to see him. Me? I don't see him as an angel or a devil, the Messiah or the Antichrist, the Alpha or the Omega... my God, I never expect a shiny new unicorn, a new puppy or pony, or a leprechaun, he's just a President. I don't agree with everything he's decided, every move he's made, or every piece of legislation he signed, and I have let the Dems know when I'm pissed off. [[Educators are pissed off.) But I'm a true Democrat and I will support my party until a third party actually does more than blow hot air, or the Republicans stop taking people like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Rick Perry seriously.

This was my fourth time seeing this President, and my first in the city of Detroit. I trekked down to Toledo in February 2008, landed a spot at a town hall meeting in Troy in June 2008, and then he shook my hand on my graduation day from the University of Michigan last year. Today, he gave a decent speech, one that helped me note my ideological differences from him [[dude, I'm way further left, but I knew that in 2008), but also furthered the sense that he seems like a halfway decent guy. [[Then again, I though that Bush II, independent of politics, was halfway decent... but he, like Obama, are being completely dwarfed by the times we live in.) He's not a Lincoln or a FDR or even Bill Clinton, but in this center-right nation, as I tell progressive friends who are living in la-la land, "Who else have you got?"

It was a great event. Afterward, the crowd mostly emptied out into the Jazz Fest [[to the chagrin of traffic and those trying to cross the border), and the vendors made a little more change. But all in all, it was a Labor Day rally. No one was looking for free handouts or free anything, and Obama didn't promise anything. We have to wait until Thursday to hear what's what just like the rest of the world. But Detroit appreciated him being here. I liked some of the nods he gave to Detroit revitalization efforts beyond the automakers, and wished his speechwriters had done a bit more research so that he could have mentioned some of "young Detroit" by name... for instance, Torya Blanchard was just at the White House.

The best line in the speech is when Obama quoted the Eminem Chrysler commercial -- "you've been to heck and back." We laughed and corrected him. "HELL, Mr. President!"

The best article I read today about Labor Day is this one:

The Last Labor Day?
Workers are disappearing from the public consciousness.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...y.html?hpid=z2

Imagine a Republican saying this: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”


These heretical thoughts would inspire horror among our friends at Fox News or in the Tea Party. They’d likely label them as Marxist, socialist or Big Labor propaganda. Too bad for Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president...

Today, the brothers and sisters of America's unions, past, present, and future say to all of you -- "You're welcome."

[Hypestyles]

alas, I didn't secure a ticket, so I didn't get to hang with the cool VIP folk, but during the speech I did get to hang back with a guy who had more than a mouthful to say about shortcomings in the Dems leadership and the way plenty of self-identified Dems embrace egregious excess in capitalism like the hedge-funders..

I hope there's some job-creating proposals with teeth.. They need to add more to the jobs puzzles than roads and bridges.. how about rail [[detroit).. water/sewerage systems [[detroit).. electrical grids [[Detroit)..

..the attorney general should be working harder on breaking up the oligopolies, in the aftermath of their surprising chin-check of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger attempt.. Reverse the deregulation that was kickstarted in the Reagan era and accelerated further with subsequent presidents..

[oldredfordette]

I took a lot of photos of the march, English. I wonder if you're in them?

The reception to the teachers delegation was great. In case you didn't march, it was set up so the groups at the end marched first - they passed all the other unions and groups so everybody gets to see them, the roar for the teachers was thunderous. Cool. [[I didn't go see the prez)

[English]

I took a lot of photos of the march, English. I wonder if you're in them?

I might be. I was wearing an AFT shirt & a sorority stadium jacket. [[It was COLD!) But the AFT delegation was mighty -- so big until at GCP, I made a pit stop, and when I was done, the AFT column was STILL marching.

It was great to have a visual on why the teacher's unions are in the crosshairs. We're one of the last largely unionized blocs left in the country. De-unionize teachers, and the labor movement is relegated to the history books. Well, we're not going down without a fight.

[bartock]

English: "When there were obstacles or horse manure, the crowd helped others around them."

I hope someone took a picture of that. I've never seen a crowd help someone navigate horse manure. Then again, I'm not a rally person. See below.


English - "We took care of small kids and seniors. It was a glorious feeling, yet all too short."

I don't know. I guess this is why I don't go to any rallies. Rallies seem to bring out a sense of accomplishment for doing what it is we are supposed to be doing in a civilized society. I get the feeling you would find the same sort of comments from folks coming back from a KKK rally.

English - "President Obama arrived and from the sound of the crowd, people were pretty glad to see him. Me? I don't see him as an angel or a devil, the Messiah or the Antichrist, the Alpha or the Omega... my God, I never expect a shiny new unicorn, a new puppy or pony, or a leprechaun, he's just a President. I don't agree with everything he's decided, every move he's made, or every piece of legislation he signed, and I have let the Dems know when I'm pissed off. [[Educators are pissed off.) But I'm a true Democrat and I will support my party until a third party actually does more than blow hot air, or the Republicans stop taking people like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Rick Perry seriously."

I don't subscribe to any party, but these are excellent points.

[English]

Here's one reason to actually go to a speech or rally [[or even listen to the entire thing on CSPAN or YouTube) instead of having the event filtered through the media:

FOX Doctors Hoffa Speech To Fabricate Call for Violence
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201109050003

Democracy is not supposed to be a spectator sport. Also, it's pretty incredible that you compared this to a KKK rally. This wasn't a Black Power gathering, or a pro-ethnic gathering of any kind. I just said above that it was a very diverse event. It wasn't exclusive, it was inclusive. There weren't just union members and their families present.

Labor Day rallies and parades, like so many things in our culture, used to be completely uncontroversial 50 years ago. Sigh...

[oladub]

English, Although I don't share your enthusiasm about President Obama, I appreciated your beautiful, eloquent, and heartfelt account of your day.

I once saw President Ford walking the Cherry Parade route in Traverse City. He called out the names of a couple of people he knew who were lining the curb as he walked along. My wife and I agreed that he had one of the largest faces we had ever seen and I thought, later, that he must have been gifted with an uncommon social intelligence that no one gave hime credit for. There is something personally significant about seeing a President in the flesh after seeing him on TV every night for years. He becomes more mortal and less distant.

I'm a union member and regard unions as a useful tool. Rich people hire their own accountants, lawyers, lobbyists, and such to advance their interests. People without so much money can join a union to collectively hire the same and have their interests similarly represented.

To survive, unions must recognize that they can only demand improvements for their members when there is a demand for labor. Forcing labor to compete with cheaper foreign labor means there will never be any demand for US labor and union membership will continue it's decline. Some favored unions associated with favored corporations could survive, I suppose, as part of a political arrangement as under Roosevelt. I don't know what has gotten into Hoffa. last week, he sued the Obama administration for the Mexican truck deal about August 24 but, at the rally, maybe he was trying to regain favor with the President.

[Det_ard]

Well, the beloved teacher's union is why I'm spending this week getting my daughter into a new elementary school. I've witnessed her assigned teacher screaming, belittling and sarcastically insulting her 2nd graders, when she wasn't busy giving them a blow-by-blow account of her divorce.

The teacher has been doing this for years and the parents, teachers and everyone knows it, except for the new principal who's met her once and thinks "she seems nice". Apparently it takes an act of Congress to get rid of a shitty teacher. And "getting rid of" usually means foisting the teacher off on the poor unsuspecting students, parents and teachers at another school across the district. Thanks teachers' unions for putting yourselves ahead of the children again.